Strike probability judgments and protective action recommendations in a dynamic hurricane tracking task

Abstract

This experiment assessed the strike probability (p s) judgments and protective action recommendations (PARs) of students playing the roles of county emergency managers during four different hurricane scenarios. The results show that participants’ p s judgments (1) increased for target cities (projected landfall locations) and generally decreased for adjacent cities and remote cities as hurricanes approached landfall, and (2) were significantly correlated with PARs, but (3) were not consistent with the requirement that Σp s < 1.0 for a set of non-exhaustive events. Participants also (4) chose more PARs as hurricanes approached landfall, especially for the counties to which they participants were assigned, but (5) failed to choose as many PARS as appropriate, especially evacuating areas at risk of hurricane impacts. Overall, the results suggest that participants were able to utilize the available hurricane information to make reasonable p s judgments, but failed to make the appropriate inferences about the significance of those p s judgments. This suggests a need for further research on people’s interpretation of threat information, development of better training manuals on hurricane evacuation decision making, and better hurricane information displays to guide people’s responses to hurricane threats.